External peripheral data storage systems such as external disk drives and card readers are standalone units that are commonly mounted to and communicate with a host computer, generally via an external cable such as a universal serial bus (USB) cable or Firewire™ cable.
One wide-spread use of an external peripheral data storage systems is for creating backups of data in the host system so to minimize the risk of a permanent loss or corruption of data due to a hardware or software damage to the host system. The backup operation may be an on-demand operation or a scheduled operation wherein the host system is configured to routinely backup data to the external peripheral data storage systems at pre-selected times, such as every midnight. In current products, however, every time a user desires to enable or disable a scheduled backup operation to an external peripheral data storage system, the user is required to access the host system in a multi-step process. Unfortunately, users may not perform the foregoing multi-step process for reasons such as unawareness of the procedural requirements or lack of technical know how, thus causing them to view the peripheral storage system as being overly complicated or inconvenient for use.
Accordingly, what is needed is a method for facilitating the performing of backup or backup-related operations by users for backing of data to peripheral data storage systems.